ricken old lady, in terror for her immaculate Sunday
caps. "Where's my little red box? I had two carpet bags and a--My trunk
had a scarle--Halloo! where are you going with that portmanteau?
Husband! husband! do see after the large basket and the little hair
trunk--O, and the baby's little chair!" "Go below--go below, for mercy's
sake, my dear; I'll see to the baggage." At last, the feminine part of
creation, perceiving that, in this particular instance, they gain
nothing by public speaking, are content to be led quietly under hatches;
and amusing is the look of dismay which each new comer gives to the
confined quarters that present themselves. Those who were so ignorant of
the power of compression as to suppose the boat scarce large enough to
contain them and theirs, find, with dismay, a respectable colony of old
ladies, babies, mothers, big baskets, and carpet bags already
established. "Mercy on us!" says one, after surveying the little room,
about ten feet long and six high, "where are we all to sleep to-night?"
"O me! what a sight of children!" says a young lady, in a despairing
tone. "Poh!" says an initiated traveller; "children! scarce any here;
let's see: one; the woman in the corner, two; that child with the bread
and butter, three; and then there's that other woman with two. Really,
it's quite moderate for a canal boat. However, we can't tell till they
have all come."

"All! for mercy's sake, you don't say there are any more coming!"
exclaim two or three in a breath; "they _can't_ come; _there is not
room_!"

Notwithstanding the impressive utterance of this sentence, the contrary
is immediately demonstrated by the appearance of a very corpulent,
elderly lady, with three well-grown daughters, who come down looking
about them most complacently, entirely regardless of the unchristian
looks of the company. What a mercy it is that fat people are always good
natured!

After this follows an indiscriminate raining down of all shapes, sizes,
sexes, and ages--men, women, children, babies, and nurses. The state of
feeling becomes perfectly desperate. Darkness gathers on all faces. "We
shall be smothered! we shall be crowded to death! we _can't stay_ here!"
are heard faintly from one and another; and yet, though the boat grows
no wider, the walls no higher, they do live, and do stay there, in spite
of repeated protestations to the contrary. Truly, as Sam Slick says,
"there's a _sight of wear_ in human natur'."

But, me